Human-based mentoring v. Biblically-based mentoring …

It’s seems like it’s difficult to spend five minutes in conversation with a church leader without the topic of mentoring coming up.

Mentoring is one of the hot topics among church leaders, and there is a need for it and value in it. However, a lot of mentoring happening in the church today is human-based mentoring rather than biblically-based mentoring.

What I mean by that is this: often a mentoring appointment will involve a church leader discussing with his or her mentor what their goals are, how they plan to achieve those goals, reviewing where they’re at with their goals, seeking new ideas to achieve their goals, seeking insights about their goals, assessing progress on goals, etc. There may or may not be a time of praying together. Then off they go until their next appointment.

What often is missing is the biblical platform from which ideas and actions should be originated. For example, let’s say an experienced pastor is serving as a mentor to a younger youth pastor. At the beginning of their mentoring relationship needs to be a discussion about what the youth pastor understands his biblical role to be, and what he is biblically basing his ministry on. While that seems to be a given, it often isn’t. It has become commonplace for entire mentoring relationships to come and go without ever first establishing a biblical foundation from which to build on.

Without that, you have human mentoring taking place — two human beings discussing their own ideas originated from their own, independent thinking. Then that is applied to ministry, and what usually follows after that is looking up Bible verses that support their thinking. That’s backwards! Before strategies are built, a biblically-based mission and method should first be established, then the mentoring relationship should be guided by that biblical structure.

Could it be that a huge part of the weakness in the church is due to church leaders leaning on their own human understanding rather than grounding themselves in God’s Word?

Look at what Proverbs 3:5-6 says:

“5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. 6 Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.”

How does this passage influence the structure of your own mentoring relationships? If it doesn’t, how should it?

Scotty